Story Time!

While I was in Washington DC for the March For Life last year, I was invited to a party. Honestly, this English accent of mine gets me in everywhere… 🙂

Anyway, each guest was asked to come prepared with a relatively unknown Saint story to share with the everyone else. Clearly this party was organized by my kind of Catholic nerd! Naturally, I told the story of this blog’s patron, St. Drogo.

However, I also came prepared with another story, not about a Saint, but about a Saint’s brother. Since it was recently the ordination anniversary of my former Pastor, Fr. Robert, I thought it would be appropriate to share that story today.

Many of you might have heard of St Jerome. He was a great biblical scholar of the Early Church and he was the one who produced the Vulgate, the official translation into Latin of the original Biblical texts. This story is about Jerome’s younger brother Paulinian, sometimes known as Paulinanus.

An unexpected Promotion

About the time Jerome was living in the Holy Land, Paulinian was living as a monk in Bethlehem. Paulinian’s monastery received a visit from St. Epiphanius of Salamis, a bishop from Cyprus. Upon arrival, the good bishop was shocked to find out that the monastery had no priest, meaning that it was not possible for the brothers to access easily the Sacraments. So, before Epiphanius started the Eucharistic liturgy, he had the deacons bind and gag Paulinian. He then forcefully ordained Paulinian to the diaconate! 

After this was complete, they untied and ungagged Jerome’s brother. After they had calmed him down (by giving him a nice cup of tea, no doubt), they managed to coax him to serve as deacon in the liturgy. However, when the liturgy was drawing to a close, the bishop had Paulinian bound and gagged yet again! This time he was forcefully ordained to the priesthood!

Naturally, we find this kind of behaviour rather shocking. One would hope nothing like this would happen today, even though it would solve the vocations crisis! We have quite a few eyebrow raising stories like this in the Early Church, such as in the life of St. Ambrose of Milan…but that’s another story for another time.

Lord, I am not worthy…

In the Early Church, Christians held the priesthood in extremely high esteem and many naturally felt unworthy of such an honor. Much like the Popes, many Christians felt daunted by the burden of caring for souls. It is often those who do not seek honour and power, that will be the ones best disposed to accepting the responsibility. I’m reminded of the end of a passage from the Chronicles of Narnia:

“Welcome, Prince,” said Aslan. “Do you feel yourself sufficient to take up the Kingship of Narnia?”

“I – I don’t think I do, Sir,” said Caspian. “I’m only a kid.”

“Good,” said Aslan. “If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not. Therefore, under us and under the High King, you shall be King of Narnia, Lord of Cair Paravel, and Emperor of the Lone Islands.

St. Jean Vianney, patron of priests, pray for us.

Do you have any fun stories from the Early Church?